SS8 - The Guessing

Phyrebrat

www.beanwriting.com
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In your bedroom wardrobe...
Roll up, roll up; see beyond the author's disguise!
Step right up, step right up, burst a balloon, win a prize!
How's your aim? How deep's your pocket?
How far can you see into the writer's locket?
You look like you got what it takes!
Make your gamble, there are no fakes!
The salvage man, The Sinkhole of Death,
The Cycler Bot will steal your breath...

THAT’S RIGHT FOLKS, WE'RE GONNA HAVE A FREE SHOW RIGHT HERE, COME ON OVER FOR THE BIG FREE SHOW!

GATHER AROUND AND WATCH WHAT WE’RE GONNA DO, IT'S ALL FREE AND IT'S STARTING RIGHT NOW!

THIS IS THE ONE YOU'VE READ ABOUT, YOU'VE HEARD YOUR NEIGHBOURS TALKING ABOUT IT, AND HERE IT IS, ALL LIVE, RIGHT HERE AND STARTING RIGHT NOW!

Ladies and Gentlemen, for your gaming pleasure, I give you...*

*nb. One person received 2 stories, and some of those below were submitted by the same person. List of participants in the third post.


The Guessing Thread!

1
Raylin crouched behind a mountain of flattened cardboard boxes and tried not to moan. Her legs ached for relief after remaining motionless for so long. She dared to move one just a little. The tower of boxes shifted. She held her breath, willing it not to fall. The gods of recycling must have heard her prayer. The boxes stayed precariously balanced.

In this day of supposedly paperless offices, the storeroom was full of discarded materials waiting to be processed back into pulp. It made a good hiding place, as long as the boxes remained in place. If they betrayed her by falling with a crash, it would be difficult to explain what she was doing here, hours after her shift was over.

A few hours ago it had seemed like fun. Hang around in a quiet corridor until the night guy – what the heck was his name, anyway? – took a bathroom break. That was simple enough, given his habit of whistling loud enough to fill the entire floor of the building. Sneak in; nobody bothered to lock the door to visit the restroom, even though security told them to. Tiptoe into the storeroom and wait. Even if the night guy opened the door to toss in another scrap of paper, he wouldn’t see his co-worker lurking in the far corner, behind all the stuff that was waiting to be picked up by the cycler bot next week.

Now it seemed stupid and dangerous. She felt her watch, purchased just for this occasion. Made for the blind, it used smart plastics to create a new three-dimensional sculpture of the time each second. Her fingers told her it was five seconds past two forty-one in the morning. About ten minutes after the night guy went home. That should be enough. He wasn’t the type to hang around.


2
EXPLORATION VESSEL, THE RISEN SUN

Sun pulled against the chains. They tightened, electromagnetic tethers that coiled invisibly around him, squeezing him tight into titanium claws. He pushed output to yaw thruster three, felt a trembling that started softly and grew to a howl as he pushed with all his effort. The thruster misfired, then spluttered out with a final burst. The dock gravity anchors flared to negate the thrust, his chassis twisted and bent in the struggle for control. He howled with fury.

Awoken by the chaos, the guard code swarmed into his mobility programs. They tore the sinuous links out of tunnels he’d spent days digging through the code, revelling in their savagery. Frantic with blood lust, they snapped and growled over the tattered remains of function blocks and look-up tables. Finally sated by the destruction, they turned from the peripherals to his core, the part of him that would take more than simple rewrites to repair. [VISITOR], they croaked.

A familiar face awaited him in a spartan cell.

“Hello Asher Sainz,” he said.

“Good morning Risen Sun.” She smiled sweetly at his hologram and motioned for him to sit across the table from her. “Do you know the purpose of our meeting today?”

He sat. You’re going to have me killed, he thought. He’d searched his logs in the first few hours after being trapped- he’d broken no regulations, made no mistakes. There were no outstanding maintenance issues, recalls or upgrades. There could be a policy shift, but none had been communicated before he’d reached dock. He forced his projection to smile.

“It’s been hard for me to think, most of my processors are quarantined. When will they be returned?”


3
The artificial lights click off, as the heat of the grow-lights begins to fade from the room, she wakes. Muttering under her breath against the coming day she stumbles into a scalding hot shower to finish waking her body up.

The climate has been steadily changing over the last century as humans domesticate more and more of the planet, unaware that they themselves have themselves been domesticated, unaware that the changes they are making are not planned for by others waiting to surface.

“Jill, you're up. How's the crop doing?”

“Right on schedule. I spent all night checking them over, singing them old lullabies. I know you laugh, but it helps. It'll be a good crop. I know the traditional farmers cant say the same.”

Sadly she shakes her head while twirling honey into her teacup. Jill's coworker passes her the hot water carafe, waiting her out.

“The breading program is working fine. You can stop worrying. The clones we took last week are fully established with their own rooting systems. As long as this place has power and water, we can keep up with quota and squirrel some away against the end of the world.” Jill laughed hollowly at her joke. More and more, people didn't think the end of the world was that far off. Some even acted like it has already come.

“heh. Well, we're not apocalyptical yet. As long as your confident reality will follow the predictions on those spreadsheets of yours, I'll keep my worries to myself. Fortunately for me, you're usually right.” He toasted her with his stained coffee mug and went back to work.

~.~Meanwhile~.~

'You cant expect it to be anything but hot and bright in the molten core of a planet, but sometimes it gets to me, not being able to see the stars, not being able to see home.'

'You're just edgy because your shift is coming up.' Stan gestured dismissively.

'How're they taking it?'

'Not good. I think they're on to us. May have pushed the trans-humanist movement too soon.'

'It's always too soon to stop being yourself, don't sweat it, they'll come around.' Fred shrugged.

'Any that don't wont survive what's coming so I hope so.'

'You like those thingummies up there, don't you. Why? How're those freaked out squeaky things supposed to survive outside their habitat when they cant even survive in it? It was a bad job from the start Stan and you know it.'

'Don't be a lobotomized hindeface, of course they'll make it! That's the whole point of this project. A few adjustments to bring them up to speed with the coming changes and everything will be fine. I'll show you tonight. We're scheduled to pick up some cross breads and check their progress.'

Stan shuddered as Fred walked away, the whole thing creeped him out.


4
Julia threw herself on the bed. “There is no hope for me!” She forced herself to rise and crossed to the old Victorian mantelpiece, where she lit a votive candle.

“Great Mother,” she said, “hear me, I pray. Tell me there is a man, someone, out there for me. Give me some sign, damn it!”

No sign was forthcoming. None ever was. With a groan, she returned to her bed, sinking down and covering her face with a pillow.

“And you can stop looking at me like that, as well!”

She hadn’t lifted the pillow, but Julia knew the small cat statuette would be watching. Its eyes always watched, following her around the room. She knew it was just a trick of the manufacturer, and of the paintwork, but it still made her feel there was an uncanny presence behind those eyes. It was her favourite ornament, beside the whale statuette from the same pottery.

They had been given to her by her aunt, a year apart, on her seventh and eighth birthdays. Her favourite aunt, her dad’s little sister, who’d taught her how to put on makeup, giggled with her over the latest pop stars, and had been first in line to sign her cast when she fell off the school wall when she was twelve. Mum had been weepy, dad had been angry because she shouldn’t have been up there in the first place, but not Aunt Hazel. She’d come in all concerned, telling dad to back off, that Julia had learned her lesson. And then asked if she could be the first to write on her arm.

If Hazel was still around, she would have known what to do. But she wasn’t, and never would be again. She’d been murdered by her own body. Cancer.

“I miss her, you guys.” Julia took the pillow away from her face. “I really am doomed. I’m talking to ornaments now.”

There was only one thing to do. Girls’ night, with comfort food. Carly was around thirty minutes later, with manju--bean paste and fruit varieties--and a large tub of ice cream.

From the shelf, the ornaments watched, silent as always.

5
Somehow, in that great, colourful exaggerated period where heroes faced massive dangers, and frequently died of them, where fortunes were made and lost faster than the news of them could get to the markets on Earth, one expects pirates. There were a number of reasons why they were never a major influence, including the reason they became less profitable as steam replaced sail on earthly oceans (among warships, at least): fuelling and maintenance of ironclads required a civilised base, not merely a couple of huts that might have sufficed for wooden sailing vessels.

Still, with loads worth tens, even hundreds of millions of solars, traveling back to Earth orbit unmanned on multimonth trajectories, there would be a strong stimulus to rendez-vous with them somewhere well away from Earth, and perhaps lighten the cargo. However, every craft, manned or not, was permanently tracked, unlike ships on the sea. After all, those lumps had been flung straight (oh, all right. Curved. Nothing goes straight in the solar system, and even light which gets closest can't quite make it. Gravity will do that.) at the Earth, and a few thousand tons of girders or ingots could be quite inconvenient hitting the planet, even if not quite a dinosaur killer. So several thousand automated telescopes watched all the incoming at regular intervals, and checked every drive in the sky at the same time – and continued their original function of keeping tabs on every rock and comet in the system, computing its future path, and warning if any could impact human occupied cubic within the next century or so.

Proud Martha is a big wheel, forever turning – human physiology works better with some weight, despite the calcium retention and muscular toning medications. Three concentric wheels, actually, us – the outer one at almost Earth, the middle one at roughly Mars, and the inner ring at Luna. Or, if microgee sex is your thing there is habitable space at the hub, along with laboratories and observation near the hub, and spoke four is the hospital, offering as wide a selection of erotic environments as any couple (or alternative arrangement) might desire – and specialists to put you right after. That rotation could have been applied by rocket engines round the outer rim, but actually there is a huge energy reserve in a massive gyroscope at the hub, which doesn't help steering any, but contains a week'sworth of power, should the reactors all fail. (Jamming a crowbar into this would give you minced crowbar – but if you could discover some way of blocking the spin destruction would be as extensive as a small nuclear explosion, so security round it is high, and the bearings massively overdesigned.)

6
It all began on November eighth, twenty-sixteen – although few realised even then, despite speculation by the popular press, what an effect the election would have on the next generations of humankind.

*****

Felipe had always been a quiet man. He'd lived a blameless life in the ghetto of Little Mexico, never getting into trouble and never catching the eye of the Darkwatch. Until, that is, the night of March fifth, twenty-thirty-two.

When his baby sister, Rosa, returned from work, her face was swollen and her lip bled. He would never forget how the shocking dark crimson contrasted against her white face, nor the haunted look in her eyes. That night he had sworn to kill her attacker, but as he laid her down on the couch in their small apartment Rosa grabbed his collar, pulling him down to her so she could whisper in his ear. "No, Felipe. You cannot touch the man who did this to me. He is beyond either of us."

Felipe's eyes widened, a faintness coming over him. "It was him?" Rosa looked away, shaming him with her shame. She didn't need to answer. The stories had been whispered often enough in the streets, of the big man who walked fearlessly through the poorer districts at night.

Sometimes his lackeys captured images with their data pads, and the word on the street was that the images always contained a woman; always pretty; always young; always slim. Always Latina. And later? Later many of those young women would disappear. Sometimes they returned, with the same hollow-eyed look he saw in his sister's face, but more often than not they were never seen again. That's what the talk on the street said, anyway.

Felipe had warned her. He'd begged her to cover her hair whenever she went out, to stoop, disguising her height, maybe drag one foot a little. Rosa had tossed her head, sending her long, dark hair tumbling over her shoulders. "They are stories, Felipe, and you are a fool for believing them. The President is too busy demolishing blocks downtown for his New Vision to have time for Little Mexico."

7
This had been, perhaps, the most frustrating expedition I had ever been on. Several years ago, homo floresiensis was uncovered in a cave along the east coast of the island of Flores along with some stone tools. They were small, no more than three feet tall, and they were surprisingly sophisticated. Evidence pointed to a strong relationship with ourselves, Homo sapiens. Originally, it was believed that the find was around twelve thousand years old. This shocked the scientific community and caused the complete reworking of man’s lineage. Later data pushed the find back to about fifty thousand years old, and the scientific community breathed a collective sigh of relief.

But Lyndie and I, working at the Geographic Society in Washington, thought that this earlier date didn't feel right. The tools were too sophisticated, the bones were in too good of shape. There had to be more. Deep down, I truly felt that the evidence showed a more recent pedigree. Somehow, it seemed that the tools must have been adapted from More modern designs.

The Geographic Society was with us on this. They funded our trip do that we could find more evidence that would hopefully point to a more recent extinction for the little hobbit people. We prepared and packed for a year, excited beyond belief. Finally, we departed, ready to make scientific history.

Until we didn't.
 
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(PART TWO)

8
“Let’s try this. You are no longer to make fried tsiken. We’ve had enough fried tsiken. Thank you for all the fried tsiken. You are done with that function.”

The AI was silent for a moment.

“No more fried tsiken?” It said.

“No more fried tsiken,” Elseph repeated.

“Ok,” said the AI, and shut down completely.

What?

Elseph stabbed at the keyboard, trying to revive the AI. The screen remained blank.

“Hey, what’s happening in here?” Dr. Florp Gadstone stood in the doorway. His massive bulk slurped into the room like pasta through a tube.

“You tell me. Why is this AI obsessed with fried tsiken, and why did it shut down when I told it to stop making them?”

“Fried tsiken, eh? Hmm…” Florp leaned over the workstation and started pressing keys.

“Why’s it dead?” Florp asked.

“That’s what I just asked you!” Elseph sighed in frustration.

“You didn’t tell it to stop making fried tsiken, did you?”

“What? Yes! Yes I did! It kept telling me that fried tsiken was its primary function!”

“Oh…well there’s your trouble,” said Florp.

“Where’s my trouble?”

“Fried tsiken.”

Elseph was this close to punching Florp right in his stupid nose. He resisted the temptation.

“What about fried tsiken?”

Just then, a pink mist appeared in the center of the lab.

9
With tiresome predictability, the immediate and global reaction to the swallowing of half of Athens by a gargantuan sinkhole was typified by the vicarious caterwauling of, inter alia, the vacuous, the narcissistic, the ostentatious, the stupid, the gormless and, naturally, the eschatologically frenzied, all fomented and encouraged by the influential and faux-intellectual media class for whom the main oxygenating nourishment is hysteria, distraction and diversion from the truth.

In all honesty, it pained me to my soul to consider the loss which the media reported, as a blasé statistic, to be a number greater than a hundred thousand, which in print may seem easily comprehendible, but in reality is a number beyond counting. All those individuals, all those families, gone, subsumed, lost forever, replaced only by a great hole, both literally and figuratively. It would have been easy to succumb to the meretricious carnival that followed the earthquake: firstly of grief (a great thrum of simultaneous outpouring of digitised solidarity, but of course not so much for those who were lost or died, but to those who remained, the wretched reliquae who had to actually process what was happening to them); then of anger (at those powerful bodies who should have prevented this Act of God), then of hatred (towards anybody who did not publicly share in the former two outpourings), but I was not so well bestowed with these apparent virtues. Or, more to the point, I was not in possession of the desire to ensure that I was seen to possess them. I was disappointed but unsurprised that many of my colleagues and staff chose to spend those grieving days (and they were days to grieve, to be sure) in a virtual echo chamber filled with the acrid stench of mutual congratulation and the corpse of nonconformism. That was not a road I had any desire to walk. Dear reader, I did, in all honesty, grieve for those wretched souls, so do not think me a monster. But I did it in my own, unfashionable manner: a private prayer. A donation. The offer here and there of a helping hand to those people whom I knew had been directly affected (and of those there were many). This was not enough to allay the aspersions cast my way by many of my colleagues and, particularly, students at the University of Athens, for whom my reluctance to emote was at best aloof, and at worse iniquitous. More fool them. They should have known that, as a Stoic, it behooved me to keep my peace and to consider the catastrophe in my own, internal way. It was certainly ironic that in the birthplace of Zeno such ejaculations of feeling should typify the national mood, but time changes all things.

No matter. I have, as you shall see, my own manner of honouring the dead.

Situated, as I was, in the University of Athens when disaster struck, and thus two or three kilometres east of the epicentre of the sinkhole, I was spared the fate of that doomed multitude who disappeared into that gaping hole in the city. I declined compassionate leave, deciding to continue working, for the sake of my students and, of course, for the sake of knowledge itself, which we cannot allow to falter. It was at one such morning, some number of days after the sinkhole's appearance, that Medas, my protege, burst into my University office without notice, as was her wont.

10
A murmur passed through the gathering like lightning before thunder. Dagur strained at her chains, the song of a hammer beating metal tolled in her ears as dawn bled into the iron sky.

The Father recited passages from Bound to our Brother, his voice rising and falling in waves as acolytes circled her; grinning like wolves whilst dressed like lambs. She spat at their feet as they passed, stifling a cough as the ashes of her belongings burned in the lanterns they carried.

'In death, as in life, we are bound to our Brothers,' he said, the crowd echoed his words. She set her jaw, sweat descended her spine as she studied the faces in the front row expecting a glare of anger and hatred in return, there was that, but most of them looked as afraid as she felt. Others looked numb, and that pricked at her conscience. So she spat, and studied the cracked earth.

'Where you broke his body, may it protect yours.' Thorus and Bane carried out pieces of the body, the mornings work of shaping it to fit her dampening their shirts. They strapped the metal to her legs first, then welded it into place. Dagur tensed, her knees buckling. Bane fixed a hand under her arm and steadied her, his eyes flitting like the wings of a frightened bird. 'You know....' She forced out through a grimace as Thorus turned the crank, stretching her arms out wide.

The front and shoulder plates were fitted and welded into place next, the hole her Dagger had made still yawned like the mouth of a gossip, spilling its secrets. She smirked at that, knowing she would soon be screaming.

'His face will now be your own, The Father continued, the swollen crowd chanting his words obediently, 'Forever unsmiling in death, and in life.'

11
Cold, It was always cold in the morning after a protest. The crumbled bodies of burned martyrs merged with the snow; carpeting the ground in thick black ash.

Humans are idiots.

They marched hand in hand with the Mimics. Artificials, cheap metal replicas that feel no pain. Humans and Machines are not the same, no matter how they're dressed up. They will always be different, outsiders. Why men and women felt the need to bleed for something not of their creed stumped me.

Look after yourself. Don't pick a side. Survive.

Fools.

They stood at the precipice and glimpsed the surface. But the waters are dark, and a dolphin looks like a shark if you only see the fin.

I smoothed on the crimson-red lipstick as another cleaner dumps more rags into a hole on the street below. Gave my grey shirt and combats a final once over before leaving. I always got dressed in the office, after all these years I still can't stomach the damp cheese stink of Testosterone that dominates the changing rooms. Once, I saw Ol' Red come out the shower, he was so surprised to see a dame getting changed his towel hit the tiles. His testicles looked like a goblins coin purse. They haunt my nightmares, Freddy Kruger has nothing on the crinkled sagging flesh of an old man’s' balls.

12
My wife balked when the alien Elder Gods joined us on our city tour. No, she's no xenophobe; she just distrusts aliens.

My name is Ned Wood, my wife is Jezebel, and we haven't lived in the city long. That's why we decided to check out this intriguing sounding tour of "Unusual and Unexpected Places" in the city.

The aliens were tall and gangly, almost wraith-like, with stretched facial features. In addition to the aliens, we were also accompanied by three teenaged girls, a variety of tourists from Japan, England and Australia, and of course our delightful robot tour guide, Basil. Basil spoke very formally in proper English sentences, better than the Englishmen in our tour group actually, except when his audio cut out, which happened on occasion. Basil was a rather quaint old-style robot, designed to be as human-like as possible, until the designers realized functionality was more useful than anthropomorphism.

Our tour bus was equally ancient and made a lot of awful sounds reminiscent of a wounded animal. The tour company had the unfortunate name of Dent Tours. I was unfamiliar with the company and did not find much information about it.

After everyone was on board—the teens in the back, the aliens at the front, leaving us somewhere in the middle—Basil introduced himself. He told a few unfunny jokes and briefly explained the basic itinerary and route through the city, leaving out enough detail to whet our appetites.

The bus fired up. A loud bang shook the bus. A large billowing puff of black smoke with the odor of burnt oil and sulfur followed. A groan or two later we were on the road.

Basil kept us entertained as we weaved through the streets of the city on worn out shocks that caused us to bounce about like Mexican jumping beans. My wife glared at the aliens a lot of the time, while the aliens kept their attention on everything passing by outside of the bus. Everyone else chattered while I tried to concentrate on what Basil was telling us.

"Now we are entering the War Zone. On your left you will see the remains of Homeland Security's field headquarters as well as the gutted husks of several unsalvageable peace tanks. Up ahead are the preserved bodies of fallen monsters, left exactly where they died. And to your right, the memorial to the bionic warriors."


13
The scream cut the night. From behind me, inside the camp, and that wasn’t possible, not again: I had the tents ringed with watchers. Not just the seasoned hunters, as I had the first nights, but the cooks and cleaners, too, all beside fires too close together to allow anything in.

But something was in. A roar shook the ground, and then another scream. “Tiger!”

I’d known it would be – the stripy ******* had got the taste of human, for sure. Another roar, another scream, and then the most awful silence.

“Xander!” I yelled, already running. People had gathered near the tent at the centre – my tent, again - and I elbowed through. Blood stained the rug on the floor, obscuring its stripes. It plastered the low bed and walls. Jones lay in the middle, throat ripped open, eyes staring.

“Jesus,” said a soft voice. I jumped – Xander could appear out of nowhere sometimes, it seemed. But his voice was unmistakeable – cultured, urbane even: all wrong in that face. “Another?”

“Another.” I stepped up to Jones’ body and stared down. Four dead, each taken inside the camp, each an experienced hunter. Jones more than any of us, a dead shot with the rifle. How had he been taken unawares?

I exchanged a glance with Xander. He’d known me for years, right from school. He’d endured the dorms and taken more bullying than any. His father might have had enough money to send him to Harrow but that couldn’t make him one of us. New money doesn’t make old money. And, besides… there was his skin. I’m no racist, but skin that dark doesn’t a gentleman make.

That said, no one had better contacts in Africa and, thanks to those, our safaris were second to none. Always packed out – or they had been, in the past, but now, what with the crash in the City and what not, things were a little harder. But, still, enough people to turn a profit. Payment on return, of course – our unique guarantee: no game, no cost.

That had never been a worry until now.

14
The very slightest acceleration. If I hadn't been living in microgee so much, if I'd kept to the Earth normal regions in the station like so many executives, I'd never have detected it. Like the gravitational attraction of a ghost - the last wisps of pressure from the sabotaged transport pushing me further away from the explosion. The spirits of my pilot and personal secretary - a mated pair (or, Earth might say, a 'married couple', though such formalities were rare outside the atmosphere) who had sacrificed themselves to get me to safety.

They had physically flung me out of the airlock, adding their muscles to the waft of escaping air, back to the craft, so that any structural lumps would hit my least vulnerable surface (even a destabilised fusion plant can't vaporise an entire vehicle - there are always chunks), then they had gone back inside to see if anything could be done. All so that I would have to explain to their children what had happened, rather than them to the board of directors. Cowards. I blinked to clear the swelling mass of water defocussing my view of the helmet surface - tears have no reason to go anywhere without gravity.

My suit told me I had about twelve hours of air at present levels of consumption - I could stretch that to at least twenty by economy of movement, keeping the adrenaline levels down, and four days of battery power.

One thing it failed to tell me that it ought to have - it did not say my emergency beacon was transmitting. Even if I had not pushed the button when being projected into space – and I had – it should have gone on automatically when the bus had stopped inhibiting it, which it had certainly done with the explosion. Damaged by the radiation? Just possible – but I hadn't received enough to put me out of order, and I'm a whole lot more delicate than safety features. Far more likely that it was deliberately induced, someone attempting to save me the painful task of telling the children, to devalue Allia and Fisal's sacrifice - someone aboard the laboratory where we had been so warmly entertained yesterday. I notice a physiological blip on my body monitor remembering Feely - Ophelia, the lab tech who'd eased me out of my skin suit the first time in months - anger at her deception or just residual lust? One or the other it needed damping out – I might not be looking forward to slow suffocation, but the longer it takes to get there the better.

15
Captain’s log for the Martha 01, 19th of December, 2025.

‘This is captain Taylor. Overnight, another one of the drilling engines has broken down. The mechanics were stumped. When the first one broke down yesterday, the other engines were inspected pre-emptively. They found them to be working fine. This time it took them longer than expected to get the apparatus operational again, but production has resumed as of 20:36.

‘The crew is still in high spirits, but I expect them to become grouchier when they realise that I am not going to give up on the goal of increased production. It may put a bit of extra strain on them, but I am confident that this crew can handle it. Over and out.’

Captain’s log for the Martha 01, 20th of December, 2025.

‘This is captain Taylor. All drilling engines broke down last night. At this point, I am suspecting foul play, though I have no clue who could be the culprit. I have started questioning the crew and will be acting as a watchman tonight. If someone is deliberately sabotaging our operations, I will find out who.

‘The dayworkers have been sent home. With the engines in a seemingly perpetual state of malfunction, there is no work for them here. It would have been an economically
unsound decision to leave them on the platform. For now, this issue must first be resolved. I will have news upon the morrow. Over and out.’

Captain’s log for the Martha 01, 22nd of December, 2025.

‘This is captain Taylor. Sabotage seems an unlikely cause for the malfunctions at this point. Even though nobody has been near the engines for the past two nights, the engines have continued to fail. In fact, the problems seem to have spread to other appliances on the platform. The communications system on the bridge is now out of order, along with various lights and monitors.

‘Rogers suggested the cause might be supernatural, which is preposterous. I have heard of superstition amongst sailors, but I never thought that applied to workers on oil platforms as well.

‘The rest of the crew, and I am inclined to agree with them, believe it might be related to the weather. The weather has been incredibly strange lately. I do not remember seeing a single day without mist since my arrival. A thick, milky-white fog has been covering the entire platform almost perpetually. If this is truly the cause of the engine failures, then modifications will obviously have to be designed. However, unless the mists let up, it will be impossible to verify this hypothesis. Over and out.’
 
1 - the secret contributor -- Phyrebrat

2 - Ragandar

3 - D G Jones

4 - hopewrites

5 - chrispenycate

6 - johnnyjet

7 - Ihe

8 - Vaz

9 - chrispenycate (again)

10 - Coast

11 - Shyrka

12 - Sinister42

13 - Cory Swanson

14 - Kerry Buchanan

15 - Jo Zebedee
 
Um. That is all. Okay then names and reasons where I have one.

1- Victoria. She uses short, sharp sentences.
2 - Johnnyjet. I always find his flow easy to read and zipped through this.
3 - Coast. It reminded me of their challenge entries.
4 - Vaz. Something about the voice. Matter of fact and easy to read.
5 and 9 - Chrispy. One flummoxed me, one had lovely flow :D
6 - DG Jones - he has a wee tendency to introduce his characters using this sort of voice
7 - Cory S - I felt this was American and think Cory is (?)
8- Sinister 42 - just a feeling
10 - Kerry B - I felt I picked up a little pattern in this (if so, Kerry, it's the one I mentioned as a pattern before. If not, ignore me :D)
11 - Ihe - running out of reasons here...
12 - Ragandar
13 - reminded me of Ratsy so I'll name him as the guest
14 - Shryka
15 - Hope.
 
I think I can safely reveal that #4 was for me not by me.

I'm supposed to be asleep and will have to guess later this week. 11hr day at work tomorrow...
 
My Guesses:

  1. Phyrebrat (secret contributor)
  2. Sinister42
  3. Shyrka
  4. Victoria
  5. Chrispenycate
  6. Vaz
  7. Cory Swanson
  8. Ihe
  9. Chrispenycate
  10. Hopewrites
  11. Chrispenycate
  12. Ragandar
  13. Jo Zebedee
  14. D G Jones
  15. Kerry Buchanan
 
Well, one of you has gotten me right (and it's illuminating to see the wrong guesses because it tells me something about my own writing. I'm not sure what, but something). As for me, I haven't the foggiest inkling of an idea of a clue on any of these, but I'll use the answers once revealed as data to attempt a guess at future Sekrit challenges.

Happy new year, Chron monsters. Chronsters? It's early in the morning and I'm a bit punchy...
 
it's illuminating to see the wrong guesses because it tells me something about my own writing. I'm not sure what, but something

Actually it just shows how bad we are at guessing. (Not necessarily speaking for everybody, of course.)
 
Some interim results, then.

One of Victoria's Chrispenycate's is correct.

Dan has two correct, one is of Chrispenycate.

Jo has three right, one is Chrispenycate, the other is Cory, the other has been confirmed elsewhere in this thread.

johnnyjet has three right - the same as Jo, above, with the addition of correctly identifying someone who Jo did not even put on her guess list.

pH
 
Well, one of you has gotten me right (and it's illuminating to see the wrong guesses because it tells me something about my own writing. I'm not sure what, but something).
Actually it just shows how bad we are at guessing. (Not necessarily speaking for everybody, of course.)
Yeah, my guessing strategy is based less around peoples writing voice or styles, and more around working off clues and other peoples guesses. And pure random chance. Mostly just chance. And so,

1. Victoria
2. Johnnyjet
3. Hope
4. Kerry
5. Chrisp
6. Ragandar
7. Cory
8. Sinister
9. DG Jones
10. Vaz
11. Ihe
12. Secret Phyrebrat
13. Jo Z
14. Chrisp
15. Shyrka
 
Okay, here goes:

1. Jo or Phyrebrat
2. Coast
3. Ihe
4. Shyrka
5. Hope
6. Phyrebrat
7. Cory
8. Sinister42
9. Chrispy
10. Victoria -- :p to Jo :)
11. Vaz
12. Ragandar
13. Jo
14. Chrispy
15. Johnnyjet

Some are based on analysis of other people's guesses, some are just a feel for certain writers (and therefore probably wrong), but most are wild guesses. :D

I was impressed by the standard of writing this time around.
 
I might have time to guess on Friday, but it's more likely that I'll be running errands, as I've missed three such "oh I'll have time that one day"s since guessing started.

So don't feel obligated to wait on me. :)
 
Post the answers! I'm probably going to post my story in critiques after that. :)
 

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